


The Sacrifice Play

by 9_of_Clubs



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: A replay of the final battle, Angst, Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Black Panther Shuri, Final Battle, Fix-It, Future OT3, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Queen Shuri, Reunions, Shuri Is a Good Bro, Shuri survived the snap, Similar but Different, Steve Rogers deserved more with the people he loves, Tony doesn't die, in every way that counts, the real steve rogers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-27
Updated: 2019-04-27
Packaged: 2020-02-08 12:53:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,657
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18623686
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/9_of_Clubs/pseuds/9_of_Clubs
Summary: At the end of the line, Steve Rogers is ready to fight everything and everyone he loves. Or. The final battle from the movie, except the way it should have gone.--It’s a battle, and other portals are forming, an army is emerging,hisarmy is emerging, the embers of hope flickering, catching, and leaping. It’s a battle, and the world is at stake, and he’s at center, and somewhere is Tony, but all he can do is follow the ingrained reflexes of his entire existence, the always instinct of his body, and let his legs carry him forward, across the wreckage, up the cliffside, and into Bucky’s arms. Real. Alive. Breathing his own breaths. The world has vanished, the battle is far, and Steve Rogers is whole again.





	The Sacrifice Play

He lies there, for a minute, and the only thing left to do is breathe.

Inhale the burning ash of explosion into his lungs, exhale a faint stream of life back into the wreckage. The beating of his heart comes strangely calm.

Whatever happens, there’s a faint exhilaration that trembles through him, the frail searing edge of hope’s knife.  Somewhere out there, sometime soon, there’ll be Bucky. Bucky, real, Bucky -- alive. Bucky, breathing his own breaths, the configurations of his cells in order once again.

And god.

God.

Steve wants to see that, to see him, to have him back again, whole and his and real. But if he can’t, if, whatever happens next, he can’t, than for him that’s enough to know. To know that he saved him, that he didn’t...That he didn’t let Bucky slip through his fingers again, didn’t leave him to suffer again, didn’t fail him, again.

_Till the end of the line._

His knees drag through gravel, achingly slow movements, as he pulls his knees into his chest, forces his weight to shift, ignores the raging of his screaming muscles as he pushes movement through them. They beg him to stay down, to rest, to stop, to sleep, but the line isn’t over, and the day isn’t done, and he can do this.

He can do this.

Whatever it takes.

Because also somewhere, still alive. Still. Alive. Somewhere near, is Tony. And Steve will be damned if he doesn’t find him before Thanos does.

_What if we lose?_

He’ll be damned if he leaves him now too, at this edge of hell, to fight alone.

There’s the keenest sensation of laughter in his throat as he stands, or maybe it’s just tears so confused by the last two years, the last five years, the last century, that they’ve finally discombobulated all the way to madness. As he takes in, before him, the endless sea of darkness that has swelled to innumerable, Thanos’s ugly smile, the certainty of his own victory, the sadistic hunger for the destruction he comes to wreck.

Brooklyn flashes in front of his eyes for a breath, a dusty alleyway, an unyielding set of fists, the iron tang of blood on his lips, and the bright smile of a boy.

He’s always hated bullies.

He squares his shoulders, twisting the remains of his shield onto his arm tighter, and brings his hands up. Tears and rage and calm twisting around the rollicking stubbornness that always lives there. He’ll punch every last one he can if that’s there is left to do. Split his lip, jump on the grenade, make the sacrifice play, he’s ready. He’s always been ready.

_I got em on the ropes, Buck._

Before he can move, there’s an almost imperceptible shift of the universe to his left, and fingers, soft, that press against his shoulder, curving there and settling for a beat.

 _You should go._ He wants to tell her.

The instinct to protect rises up with a vengeance, even though it’d been too much for him to feel it fully for the last two years, even though he knows he hasn’t been enough, couldn’t muster what was needed, not for everyone, not for anyone. Even though he know he’s let her down.

 _He’ll need you_ , he wants to tell her, _after_.

But the words die on his tongue, never even conceive fully to voice, because the stubborn set of her chin is his twin, the hot-headed refusal to be told she’s not enough, that she can’t. And none of them are children anymore. Her panther suit, he knows, is tucked into the necklace at her throat, but he doesn’t ask her why she doesn’t let it form around her. She can taste it too, that deceptive hope.

Everything is shifting.

So he nods instead and she smiles back, a sunshine smile that hasn’t risen fully since the earth covered itself in dust, since she became Warrior and Queen, since the ones she loved the most blew away in the wind. It rises now though into the smokey sky, a new dawn rising with it, and together, another together, they curve back towards the army.

“Shall we dance, Captain?” She hums a thread of laughter into the air and the flow suffuses into him, breaks a grim determined smile of his own from between his lips.

His nod is curt, and the words come dry. “I’ll try not to step on your toes.”

She laughs again and her blasters crackle to life, a loud hush of electricity, which he thinks at first, is responsible for the crackle of static in his ear, but the sound fades, and still muffled imperceptible words make their way through the synapses of his brain. Before him, Shuri’s gaze is shifting, as he tries to make sense of the sound, a terrible mixture of undefinable emotion sweeping across her features as she looks past him.

Something is happening. He understands, but can’t give it name. Can’t yet make himself think it. Something is happening.

The world is getting brighter around them, a sort of a golden glow creeping out against the shadows, sweeping onto the army in front of him, and there’s, all at once, the warmth of real, familiar, sun along the back of his neck, touching the points where his skin is bare with gentle rays.

He thinks he hears the sounds of birds. He thinks a breeze sweeps across his cheeks, clean and fragrant.

Shuri’s eyes are wide.

For the first time today, he feels frozen.

_A sixteen year old kid again in Brooklyn._

The battle-steady pounds of his heart rush one into the other all of a sudden, and it’s hard to find air, hard to remember what it is to breathe, impossible to turn, because not the stones, and not Thanos, not pain, or death, or the end of the world, terrify him so completely as the thought that he has to turn, has to turn into that sun, and see, and what if he hopes to see isn’t there, what if it’s anything except, except for -

“Steve.” Shuri breathes, and her eyes are shining, and there are tears streaming down her cheeks, glistening, proud tears, her fingers reaching up, coiling into the tatters of his uniform.

And then it comes in an echo.

An echo he has no right to hear across the roar of crowds, across the wind, and the dust, and the field of battle. But even if he wasn’t himself, wasn’t super, and his senses weren’t super, was that skinny, sickly kid too stupid to run away from a fight, he would hear that word on that tongue anywhere, has heard it again and again in his nightmares, and hears it now here, embedding itself in between every last cell in his body, in between every atom of his existence, in every contraction of his heart.

“Steve.”

And then the sunlight, Wakandan sunlight, is blinding in front of him as he whirls on his heel, a desperate, clumsy movement which twists a broken sound from between his lips. There are two figures in the golden glow, silhouettes coming into sharp relief, coming closer, two gazes that look for him from the haze. One comes steady, assuring and regal and kind, swells relief in his chest, and helps him turn to the other, with a shift of chin back. There’s a small smile painted into the twisting of Bucky’s lips, uncertain to find himself here, uncertain of his place, of himself, but always, always, resilient.

Always, always--

Steve’s.

It’s a battle, and other portals are forming, an army is emerging, _his_ army is emerging, the embers of hope flickering, catching, and leaping. It’s a battle, and the world is at stake, and he’s at center, and somewhere is Tony, but all he can do is follow the ingrained reflexes of his entire existence, the always instinct of his body, and let his legs carry him forward, across the wreckage, up the cliffside, and into Bucky’s arms. Real. Alive. Breathing his own breaths. The world has vanished, the battle is far, and Steve Rogers is whole again.

Sobs are dragging from his body, and around him Bucky is trembling too, the expansions of his chest, the brush of his hair is a symphony of too much, too much, too much. Sensory overload he can’t begin to process, but every part of him knows this is important, this is necessary, he doesn’t need his brain for that. His arms come out to wrap hard around Bucky, crushing, maybe, too hard, maybe, but he doesn’t care.

 _“I’m sorry.”_ He’s muttering because Bucky has to know, has to understand. He’s fought so hard, tried so hard. He failed him, again, he couldn’t hold on, but--  “ _I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”_

“Shut up, Steve.” The voice in his ear makes him shudder, almost violent, makes him laugh, a sputtered sound, and he’s boneless, melting, clutching, as though if only he presses hard enough, they’ll meld together and never have to be parted again.

But they have to be. Steve knows they have to be. One more thing still to do.

“I love you.” He breathes into Bucky’s shoulder, it comes out a wounded scrap of sound, barely perceptible in the din, and it gets lost in the brush of Bucky’s lips as their mouths meet.

“I love you too.”

—

The battle comes as it must, and he knows it’s a fool's errand to find everyone he loves in the mob, as they all clash and crash, hundreds of heroes, thousands of foes, that it’s a distraction with too much at stake, that he has to focus, has to fight, has to end this. But his eyes track for Bucky anyway, every time he vanishes in the crowd, even as he sends the hammer streaking lightning through the air, even as he stabs a monster with shield shards, even as he barks orders into the comms, trying to get the gauntlet back to Scott, who has concocted some scheme to hide it in time, at least for the moment.

T’Challa streaks past him with it for a breath, a blur of purple, black, and claws, and Steve, again, feels that intensity of relief, to have him back, to sense that calm resoluteness which erases any consideration that that maybe they’ll lose. To have someone who understands the mantle of leadership and the sting of loss that always comes somehow from its weight. T’Challa has been a harbor for him, a safety in the storm, and it knits another broken part together, to see the graceful, deadly motions of his body as he slips across the plain. He lets his eyes follow the King for a moment, and then, remembering, punches through three outriders and swivels his head back around in almost panic.

A catch of breath and then exhale.

Shuri has found Bucky in the crowd and she dances around him with her blasters, leaning over to whisper something laughing in his ear between crests of battle, and then fluidly slips into motion again, ducking and dodging and, Steve thinks, lingering in an obvious wrong step a beat too long, so that Bucky, a growl formed across his face can take out the easy mark that comes for her. Her eyes find Steve’s as though she knows he’s looking, and he rolls his own pointedly when she grins. Bucky looks proud and pleased though, to have defended her so well, and recklessness lives in a glass house.

Really, he’s glad for her presence, the creation of a need for Bucky to be somewhere but right next to him. He wants them tucked away on the side, in the midst, anonymous, not at center. Not on the line of fire. He wants Bucky at his side, of course he does, he wants his safety more.

Around them the tide turns no way, a tug of war steeped in futility. Carol comes flaming from the sky, and more of their parts are together. Tony flashes into his vision, arms around Peter, and it stutters something in Steve’s heart. He wants to go to him, but he’s too far. He wants to reach for him, but suddenly, after their last two years of near constant touching, he’s not sure how. There’s a faint unpleasant sensation churning in his stomach, but this is no place for it at all. Later. There will be time for that later. He’ll fix it, he’ll make it okay, it will be okay for everyone.

He steals one last look and lets his eyes slip away. The rhythm of the fight sweeps around him and he’s far again, one new twisting ache lancing through his heart.

Walls of water crest up, threatening to flood the sunken space, stopped by magic and myth, and Thanos rains fire through the atmosphere until Carol demolishes his ship, debris and flame shooting in all directions. He finds Thor in the center of the field, and a grim current of understanding twines between them.

_This has to end._

He watches Bucky take out two more assailants and then turn wide-eyed, searching in the same way Steve has been, until they find each other. He pauses, smiling, for a breath, and then wraps his arms around the throat of a titan, ignoring the kiss of death that curves all around them.

He won’t die in front of Bucky.

He won’t die in front of Bucky.

He won’t die in front of Bucky.

He repeats the mantra even as pain crushes him in its embrace, as the fists of the giant bruise his ribs and grate his bones. He’s bleeding, he’s crying, he’s been through worse.

He won’t die in front of Bucky.

The waves crest higher, the winds pick up, somehow, it’s only him, him, Thanos, and Tony, and the gauntlet rolling on the ground before them.

“NO-“

He gurgles blood, as Tony dives for Thanos and gets smashed into rubble, as Thanos dons their gauntlet and raises his hand.

No.

He can’t lose them.

He can’t lose Bucky again.

He can’t die in front of Bucky.

His knees come under him and he crawls forward, and then in a flash Carol is there and the gauntlet is flung and everything, everything moves too fast for the disorientation of his mind. Pain dims his world to a narrow track, he can’t find Bucky, and panic fills him, distant, but he can find Tony and their eyes meet, and there are glowing orbs of light on Tony’s hand. A determined grimace, a tired resignation.

No.

No.

It’s not meant for humans, Tony. No.

Somehow his body is moving, because it knows, it knows this is imperative the way it knew for Bucky. That it doesn’t matter if every limb is falling, if he’s turning to dust, if he’s shattering into pieces, that he has to make it to Tony. That he has to be there. That he can’t _let_ him be alone. Not again. Not this time.

And then he’s there, his hand, blood stained, dusty, finds Tony’s cheek. There’s that terrible pain there for a moment, of unresolved anger, fresh now, the one which whispers _betrayal_ , _liar_ , _breaker of trust_ , but then worse, it clears, shoved away in an acceptance of fate, and Tony nuzzles into his touch, open and tired and in love.

“Together.” The murmured word comes from cracked lips, half drenched in laughter, half in anguish.

Tony lifts his hand in the corner of Steve’s vision.

SNAP.

The universe vibrates on its axis as the enemy this time, unseams, flies apart into ripples of graceful dust. Scarlet drenches the grey, falls from both their bodies, and Tony Stark collapses into his arms.

Somewhere, there’s blue too, watching him, and the sound of a familiar voice yelling muted.

It wraps around him like a blanket, and the world goes dark.


End file.
